All Things Hold Together

I mentioned last week that the boys were in trouble for going out past their boundaries.

Originally, their boundaries were much closer to home.

We live in an apartment complex with privately-owned streets, accessible to the city streets only on 2 sides of the property. We live at the corner of the two sides of the property that are not accessible to city streets, in a cul-de-sac that is bordered on one side by a brook.

They were always made to stay in the cul-de-sac, unless an adult was with them.

This always worked out fine because they were best friends with the girls next door and never had any reason to want to leave.

Then the girls moved.

After a long period of mourning, they were ready to find new friends.

They did, but their new friends lived outside of where the boys were allowed to go.

One friend lives outside our neighborhood, but just across the street from where one of our streets outlets to the city street.

The others (two brothers) live in our neighborhood, but up the street, out of my sight.

I had been letting the boys go up to the park, which is at the center of our neighborhood. There, they were able to play with lots of kids.

But I was always conflicted about it.

Was I giving them too much freedom?

When I found out that they were going out of the neighborhood and a few blocks away to the store, I knew that they were not ready for that freedom.

We grounded them for a week and intended to slowly give them back their freedom.

Then last night, Big E said he wished the girls never left.

I thought he was just missing them because we were looking at some photos on their mother’s MySpace page.

When I asked him why, he said, “Then we never would have left the circle. I don’t think I was ready for that much freedom.”

Wow!

I am so amazed at that level of self realization.

I don’t know that I have ever been more proud.

But I do know that they will not be having their freedom back for a while longer.

The boys decided to get out the digital camera and try to make stop motion films with their Legos.

Here are the results.

From Big E…

From The D…

The other day, I was in the kitchen and Big E was supposed to be cleaning in the living room (adjacent to the kitchen).

I noticed out of the corner of my eye that he was passing in back and forth in front of the kitchen door, so I said, “[Big E], are you cleaning or just pacing back and forth?”

“Both,” he replied, “I’m multi-tasking!”

I decided that I want to talk more about what is happening with my children individually, so that I can come back and read about it in the future - sort of like an online memory book.

So, I am going to add three more categories: Little E Things, Big E Things, and The D Things.

This morning on the way home from church, the kids were talking about the Heroes Unmasked series that they are doing in children’s ministries. The preschoolers are doing the same hero each week as the elementary schoolers, so Big E was telling Little E that they are leading up to the ultimate hero - Jesus (on Easter).

Big E said, “Yeah, if Jesus didn’t save us, and die for our sins, then we wouldn’t get to go to heaven and be with God.”

Big D said, “Well, we would; we would just have to sacrifice an animal every time we did something bad.” (He reads a lot of Old Testament.) “And not just any animals, our good animals, like sheep. We would have to get them all clean and nice looking, then sacrifice them with our own hands - yuck!”

I never really thought about it that way.